


summer 68

by asiren (meliorismo)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: F/F, Female EXO, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 18:09:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19301044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliorismo/pseuds/asiren
Summary: In the end, they were happy. Someway, somehow.





	summer 68

**Author's Note:**

> this is the rewrite of a work of mine originally posted in 2014. since it was during a moment of my writing that i wasn't very interested in working on anything longer than 2k words, it's really short and has a fast vibe of reading. also, i was really into girl exo at the time.

Junmyeon looked like a movie star. She went to Los Angeles to try her luck five years prior, and no one heard of her again — she didn’t call or sent news of her life there, and her mom had already mourn her lost. Poor Mrs. Kim was daughter-less when Junmyeon showed up in April, and it was a very awkward situation. When she left that car, scarf around her brand new curls and big sunglasses shaped like hearts, no one knew exactly what to say. Eventually, though, it was collectively decided that a welcome home! was the most appropriate response.

Junmyeon smiled at everyone, the aunties under her big hats and the cousins with their babies in their arms, plus the whole town who heard about the scandalous news, and said the most shameless words a lost daughter can ever say: which is, _I’m back._

Kyungsoo was born and raised in that small town, and never thought about leaving. Why would she? Everything was good; why court disgrace? She wasn’t married and all her relationships never lasted. Her sisters were all over the place, their passions leaving behind baby after baby, labor after labor. Kyungsoo was the midwife of the village, and watched closely all the things pregnancy can do to a human body. Her fate was to be Aunt and never Mother, and she was really fine with that. After a while in the business of bringing babies into this world, you really start to count your blessings when it isn’t you screaming on the bed.

They met each other in a morning, under the hottest sun in three years. Kyungsoo was leaving a house where the madam had just given birth; she would probably die but her baby was healthy and likely to survive. She looked, as always, really severe, almost judgmental around the edges of her face; and that’s when she saw Junmyeon for the first time since her self imposed exile. It was hard to not notice her, since she dressed as extravagantly as the rich mistresses in the big cities. Still, she was even more beautiful and shameless than the old women had made her look like. Everyone muttered that Kim Junmyeon was a prostitute in Los Angeles, but no one knew for certain. She showed up rich and fancy, and for that only she should be despised.

The gossip surrounding her was so wild and intense that Kyungsoo lived in fear, during those first months, of being called to help Junmyeon give birth to a child whose father would be some married man. It was common in the streets to find a girl or another whispering between themselves how probable it was that Junmyeon had to leave Los Angeles in a hurry; how shameful it would be to poor Mrs. Kim. How it would be better if she had just really disappeared.

Still, the seasons went and left, and no baby arrived. Eventually, people had to shut their mouths.

 

* * *

 

Kyungsoo averted her eyes when Junmyeon waved at her. She didn’t know what to do, so she just left.

 

* * *

 

They talked for the first time during a storm. Kyungsoo heard someone knocking at her door and, worried, went to open it in a hurry; when you’re a midwife, there’s no such a thing as bad weather. Still, at the other side of the door there was only a woman in a black miniskirt, smiling a little shy. Junmyeon was wet as a drowned rat.

“Can I stay here, just for a while? I don’t think I can get home like this.”

Kyungsoo blinked, as if suddenly realizing what was happening. “Oh! Of course, my God. Look at my manners.” She more or less dragged Junmyeon to the bathroom, where she gave her new guest four towels — one pink, one green, one blue and one plaid. Junmyeon looked very amused, but didn’t say a thing.

She was weird, and somehow foreign; Kyungsoo didn’t quite know how to act around a stranger, not when she went to such lengths to never have to. She made everyone familiar so there wouldn’t be situations like this one. It was liking looking at the stars; pretty, yes, but you wouldn't want to get too close. You could end up burned.

 

* * *

 

Junmyeon taught Kyungsoo how to cook an apple pie and Kyungsoo explained to her how to treat an open wound. Junmyeon helped her during the birth of the fourth child of Kyungsoo’s third sister and swear to this day that it was a life changing experience, even if she spent the whole thing looking a little green on the cheeks. Kyungsoo heard the story of Junmyeon’s life in Los Angeles without saying a single word, even when she got to the part of how everything crashed and burned like a funeral pyre. Kyungsoo thought her bright, and fascinating, and brave. Junmyeon thought Kyungsoo the very best thing to ever happen to her.

They were happy, this year and all the ones after that.

They really, really were.


End file.
